This Week in Montana.

Spring. Rain. Sun. Cold. Warm. Birds. Snow. Garden. Green. Drips. Yellow. Creek.

“Don't wait for your dreams to lead you to happiness. Lead your dreams to happiness.”
Ok, that’s borders on a cheesy inspiration line but when I heard it, which was sometime a couple nights ago from one of the million voices that has access to my brain via iPhone, it actually caught my attention. We live in a day and age when we are told by an annoying crowd on the internet that we do not in fact have agency in this life. That life will happen to us. And as such, we should support such and such cause, politician, political vein, social protocols, social protections, etc… all to protect us because we need protecting. We need protectors. Specially most of these voices lead to “we need government to protect us.” I have a lot of problems with this idea, but chiefly among them is the notion that we are all victims of circumstance and helpless in our pursuit of individual happiness and self-worth, neither of which can be derived ever from external sources. But we constantly are told otherwise. We need this or that to be happy. We need to be fixed. This or that will fix us. We need protecting. This or that will protect us. Without all the above, you will not be happy. And it’s bull shit. To be briefly zen about: Only I can make me happy. No one and nothing else. Period. It’s perspective.

I’ve enjoyed thinking about these Substack posts more than I expected. I’ve been bad about setting a specific time each week to write them, but it’s not for lack of want. I want to build this into my routine. I want the habit of writing here. I like how it forces my brain to sit down and consider what I’ve been thinking about over the week. It leads me to think more intentionally about what I put in my brain, whose voices I allow space to, and to be more intentionally in what I think about at any given time. It has been a wild thought experiment. Social media in this light feels like a god damn roller coaster with unexpected twists and turns, and slow climbs and frightening plunges. But I’ve also realized, you can get off the roller coaster. You close your phone. Poof. Gone. We are told we need to concern ourselves with worldly news. We are told we are better citizens when we are thoroughly informed. And sure, to a degree it is good to know what is going on in the world, but if we are being honest, 95% of what is called “news” online is not news at all. It is commentary at best, and vitriol for the most part. I’ve made note the last few weeks about what gets presented in my social media feeds as “news” and I can say with certainly, I learned nothing, absolutely nothing pertaining to actual validated information that I did not already know. Watching reels and tiktock and scrolling X and parsing through FB and IG, even when you follow supposed “news” outlets will teach you literally nothing but opinion. There has not once been a good breakdown of the true geopolitical outlook of the Ukrainian war or what various ways peace could be reached and what outcomes those theoretical treaties would have on various populations. Same goes for Gaza/Israel. Same goes for US politics. I think some of the only valuable information I came across was that one of my cameras has an available firmware update. That is valuable information that will affect my life. And that I can have an effect on. And that is part 2 of this thought: We are told that we need to “know all of this,” to “be informed” when the information they are handing out neither affects us, nor is anything we can do something about. For the most part outside of direct participation and our minor roll in political change via voting we are told we need to know everything about things we can not change, things that 40, 100, 2000 years ago we would not have known about, much less thought we could do anything about. Our effectiveness is much the same while our conception of our own effectiveness is amplified. And with reason. It is the attention economy. The more we tune in, the more data we create, and the more data there is to sell. And the more we are there, the more advertising dollars these companies get for feeding us ads. And that is all there is to the entire ecosystem of social media. The goal is not to feed us ideas. The goal is to lead us. The goal isn’t to make us more knowledgeable with useful information. The goal is to make us keep coming back, looking for more, asking for more, wanting to be lead.

And here it is. The loop back to the original thought. Happiness. And for practical purposes, lets think of happiness not as the momentary dopamine hit of some pleasantry, but rather as the Big Picture Happiness that includes sadness, beauty in tragedy, and overall feeling life is beautiful in all its shades of pain, suffering, joy, and pleasure. It’s a satisfaction. Enough. Fulfillment. That is the “happiness” I’m referring to here. And how do we attain it? And this is where I paused at the aforementioned quote. No one else can lead you or I to happiness. No amount of things will make it appear. The secret to that sort of happiness only comes with the realization that we ourselves have both the agency and capacity, no matter our past, to create it for ourselves. And it usually involves wanting less for ourselves and wanting more for those we surround ourselves with.

So when we think of our dreams we are often tempted to think rather selfishly and in terms of acquisition. But most often if we are honest with ourselves, and we think about these actuality of played out scenarios, acquisition rarely leads to happiness. Creating stability in our lives does. Helping others does. Accomplishing challenging tasks does. Motion does. Doing does. But acquiring… brief dopamine hits that leave us within days if not hours. That is where the “lead” part comes into play. We choose the direction. We lead ourselves. We set our own goals and pursue them in the direction we see fit. It requires going against the stream. It requires going against the social winds. It requires doing things others don’t understand. But it is all based in one small but key thought: We alone live our specific lives. We walk the trail with others, we cross paths, sometimes walk the same path, but ultimately, no one else lives our specific life, so why pretend we need to do it like anyone else. What worked for others will never work specifically for us. And when others tell us we have to do such and such, that is because they have to.

I’ve encounter countless examples of this in my life. When I spent my 20’s working seasonally and adventuring in the off season, creating no savings, working on nothing specifically long term, countless people weighed in on all the ways I could and should be doing things better. But I had a vision of what I wanted. Experience. I knew I’d likely alter courses eventually, which I did, but I had a clear vision for how short my 20’s would be and I utilized them accordingly.

When I started working on our business I encountered similar opinions. There is nothing inherently stable or safe when starting your own business. There is no guarantee of stability. There is great financial risk. But I had a vision of what I wanted to accomplish and with the support of a few key players in my life I pushed in. Meanwhile several people I’d have thought would encourage such endeavors offered only hesitation and concern. Not out of anything malicious, but out of concern for stability. But I’ve never been particularly risk averse. In fact I’ve always thrived with a little of it. I’ve never been afraid to step out of the line and go off my own direction. I’ve never seen the the pathway of the masses as a line for myself. Even when it comes to hiking in the mountains I’ve always enjoyed veering off trail and bushwacking my way to new views.

Life is like that. You don’t have to follow the trail. You don’t have to do it like others. In fact it never works that way. You can’t duplicate anyone else’s path. There is no single way to do a thing.

I’m fading. A little off track. My family just walked in. My concentration is waning. But we’ll plow through this.

I’ve been thinking about what influences my mind encounters during the week. Social media has taught me nearly nothing. But Substack. Audiobooks. Podcasts. Books. Long-form input. Long-form learning. Here is where the gems lie. This week I’ve fallen into a few episodes with Scott Galloway including I’ve started his book The Algebra of Wealth. He’s offered my mind a lot of stimulation on thought and helps lead towards big picture thinking. Similarly, but completely different, I’ve been reading “Our Man in Havana” by Graham Greene. Reading fiction not only offers a window into historic perspectives, but into the windows of humor, drama, and emotion. Long form media is completely different in the brain than 15 second thoughts. I’m so incredibly bored with short thoughts, I crave longer forms. I’ve gotten sucked much more into YouTube and Substack for this reason. I’d rather watch someone entertainingly discussing the intricacies of a camera body for fifteen minutes than 30 seconds of… anything. Comedy snippets maybe. That’s about all the short clips are good for.

Ok, I’m fading here. I’m done. I’ll try to add a little more in the morning before sending this out.

Ok, it’s morning. Montana in late May, it’s cold and raining. I like it. 6:30 am and it’s already light out. The sound of the creek rushes in the windows. Or is it my wife’s phone? I think it’s both. But the sound of the rain on the roof and windows is unmistakable. Even in the gray light outside, the green of everything is lush.

Thinking again about what I let in my brain, and what I am working to keep locked out. I want to develop my own ideas, not incessantly gargle others around my brain. My habit as of late is to wake up, sneak downstairs in the quiet of morning and write for an hour or so before the day begins in earnest. I want this to be proper writing, project writing, but I tend to reserve that for later. My morning writing I let go wherever it might. Sometimes I contribute it to Substack. Often it just fills pages. I have shelves of pages at this point in life. But the habit of writing is what is important to me. My brain needs this. Loves this. Craves this.

It is a habit I can get behind. I think a lot about habits. Routine. They are linked together. Many of the things we do throughout our day are done without necessarily thinking about them. The way we make our coffee. The order of how we go about our day. I actually quite like routine. It’s a frame work I’m efficient in. I try to build habits of getting certain things done in certain parts of the day. Then suddenly I find I’m bored with it and need to shake it up. It happens naturally. I shake up the order of doing things and make them fresh again. And then, eventually I build a new routine around it until it too needs a shake up. In the writing life this is especially useful.

Habits are such a valuable tool for moving forward. Good habits and routines benefit most when we need them the most. During easy periods, stress free periods we don’t tend to worry about the things that make our brains and bodies better. Exercise, reading, writing, getting out for walks, etc. But for me, I see these as incredibly important to build into the day to day, not just because they make my day to day better, but because when challenges arise, true challenges, mental, emotional, physical, at these times these healthy routines and habits are what get us through. I’ve built a few that I find work for me and help me stay focused. A quick trip to the creek every morning for a swim in cold water. A walk or run with the dog. 100 push ups scattered throughout the day. A minimum of 7 hours sleep. Not looking at my phone for the first hour I’m awake. Reading before I go to bed. I’ve built these things into my day to day as a minor discipline. I say discipline because as good as I know these things are for me, for some reason in my humanistic nature it still feels challenging to make sure I include them daily. But after a few months of working on creating these habits my brain craves them when I don’t do them. My mind and body know the value and make the discipline of doing them daily worth the challenge. Ultimately I’ve come to realize that I love challenge in and of itself. I like working on things. I crave the push. Discipline builds habit. Habit carries us through the challenges. Learning to move forward, no matter what, is one of my keys to life.

As I look around society I can’t help but see the external forces telling us we can’t. There are incessant voices telling us us we are weak as humans. That we can’t overcome the challenges. In fact we are often told we face challenges that simply do not exist. The voices approach from all angles, but particular at the 45 degree angle from our phones to our faces. I, like a lot of people in middle age, remember a time before cell phones. And while I love the freedom this new technology has provided, especially as a business owner who is not tied to a physical location day in and day out, I can not help but see the strange powers at work behind the scene that are only made possible by this technology. In the era before the cell phone we all had time to ourselves. We had time to sit, think, ruminate, and more often than not that down time lead the masses to get out and do more.

Driving around a college town in the 90’s vs now is a very different experience. In the 90’s you could not drive down the streets of Missoula without seeing people out and about everywhere. Yards had groups of people. Lounging. Playing frisbee. Playing hacky sack. Walking. Little kids on bikes or playing with soccer balls. The volley ball courts around town were full. The parks were full. If the weather was good, people were outside. Driving around this town on a nice day is different now. Quieter. And the few people you pass are often not actually together. They have their faces tied to their hand with an invisible electronic light form. The number one habit that has been built in our society in the last 15 years is to pick up your phone and stare at it. I’ve built the habit. You likely have built the habit. Society has built the habit. I’ve seen it across the US. I’ve seen it around the world. A once bustling trainstation in Thailand now is only bustling when the train arrives. But during the wait, it is silent as everyone stares at their phone. So much community has been lost. So much human connection has been lost.

In terms of habits, this is the biggest one I’ve been fighting for myself. To get rid of the habit of the phone. To put it down and do something else. To engage with who ever or whatever is around me. Am I good at this habit yet? No, not really. But I’m getting better. Substack has actually become part of this habit shift. When I come to Substack I come to either read long form thoughts, or write long form thoughts. And writing here, like in my morning journals, is like practice for the writing goals I have for books. But the other social media forms we are familiar with become increasingly boring the more I regain my long-form attention. I can’t stand being inundated with different unrelated and seemingly random flashes of ideas of the other media forms. They are like a land where nothing real happens and nothing ever tracks. Flash. Flash. Flash. Each flash a different idea. Incessantly trying to sway or sell me or impress me. But only for a second and then a new one. It drives my brain crazy. So more and more I’ll go to them and leave quickly. I love photography, and I love sharing photos so I continue on at Instagram, but not nearly as much as a consumer, but with the goal of sharing.

I’d rather create than consume. This has always been my dream. Reading books in my twenties I found a love of books that made me want to contribute to that world. That has been the dream for me for decades now. And while I could sit back and listen to the voices that say it can never happen, I just say fuck it. I’ll write anyways. And while this week’s Substack has been a bit like water rushing over a field in no direction, I think the biggest point I’m realizing is the importance of not listening to the voices of others when it comes to how you live this life. Ultimately we captain our own ships. And we can do it our own way. There are obvious societal structures we have no control over. We live in cultures we can not necessarily change. But the way we think is our own if we take the time to figure out how it is we ourselves think. We have to take time away from letting others think for us. Even if we are not creating, we need to take a break from consuming. We need to find patters of longer thought. We need to find challenges to undertake. We need to push ourselves. We need to do hard things. It is built into our dna to move through life and discover things for ourselves instead of taking the word of others.

I often think back to when National Geographic was a better magazine. I’d read it eagerly looking at places around the world I’d never seen. In college I told a friend I wanted to explore Nepal. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to see it. “Nepal has already been discovered,” they said because it had become mildly popular for young people to travel there. But I didn’t care. I don’t care if the whole world has been “discovered.” I still haven’t seen it. I still haven’t been there. Just because others have doesn’t make it less of an experience for me.

We get one shot at this life. We are told it hard. And it is. But humans thrive in hardship. If you ever start feeling down about the journey, strive to build a new habit. A healthy habit. Move forward. Push. Discover. Go.

I’m pushing send now. Until next week.

[Take four pictures this next week. slow pictures. things you like for no good reason. share them on substack. tag me. I’d love to see them.]